Technological Fixes Research Articles

Prophet in the (degrowth) wilderness: storytelling Herbert Gruhl as a far-right environmental lieu de mémoire

ABSTRACT In this article, we further the understanding of the contemporary far right’s politics of the environment by analysing the (re)construction of a key figure in the history of the modern environmental movement in Germany, Herbert Gruhl (1921–1993). The latter co-founded the Green party and, subsequently, two further right green organizations, as well as authoring bestselling books on the environmental crisis. Articulating themes also found in today’s degrowth movement, Gruhl eschewed green capitalism, ‘globalism’, and technological fixes while advocating for a relationship between humans and the environment consistent with traditional conservative principles of moderation and rootedness. Focusing on the far right’s storytelling of Gruhl-as-unheard-prophet—Gruhl as a lieu de mémoire of the contemporary German far right—we offer a first systematic interrogation of stories regarding the prophet as a type in far-right environmental communication more generally and, more specifically, on how his memorialization as a ‘sacred center’ reproduces contemporary far-right (eco-)politics, that is, the legitimation of such an agenda and the identities built through it. In so doing, we illuminate the far right’s story of the lost opportunity for a conservative/far-right ecology, one which was betrayed by the left-wing Greens, as well as its own vision of an alternative eco-future.

Inequities in the green transition: anti-mining protests in the European periphery

Supposed green technological fixes to the climate crisis necessitate the mining of raw materials such as lithium en masse, spurring the proliferation of mining globally and the associated social and ecological harms. Major economies are engaged in a resource race for critical raw materials that are indispensable inputs for electric vehicles and digital technologies in the green transition and fourth industrial revolution (Kalantzakos, 2020; Kalantzakos et al, 2023). As this race materialises, so too has resistance and contestation on the proposed mining sites. This article engages with the critical literature on ecologically unequal exchanges (Hornborg, 1998; 2014; 2016) and extractivism (Acosta, 2013) to explore protracted civil society resistance to two lithium mining projects in rural and agrarian regions of Serbia and Portugal. The European Union is pursuing a dual agenda of decarbonising personal use transport and resource autonomy in an increasingly shifting geopolitical order; in turn a massive effort for onshoring mining activities is underway in Europe. The author argues that recent policy enactments by the European Union for onshore mining produces ecological and social harms in rural and agrarian areas and is illustrative of an unequal ecological and economic exchange. Agrarian and subsistence livelihoods are affected in pursuit of green technological solutions, highlighting the contradictory character of the green transition under capitalism and ultimately advocates for a degrowth position.

The technology or the child? Moving beyond technological fixes in deaf education in India and elsewhere

ABSTRACT As cochlear implants become the gold standard in intervening on deafness around the world, teachers of deaf children are increasingly expected to have technological expertise and to ensure that cochlear implants, and other hearing technology, are being used and that they are working. Students are only considered “ready to learn” if they are using their technology. Drawing from ethnographic research and semi-structured interviews with educators, families, surgeons, speech and language therapists, and audiologists in Indian cities, this article mobilises two conceptual frameworks from medical anthropology and public health – the “biotechnical embrace” and the “structural competency framework” to argue that teachers of deaf children, both in India and internationally, need to think and work beyond technology. Ultimately, focusing on a child does not mean focusing (only) on technology but rather on seeing a child as enmeshed in social, political, educational, and economic structures and relations. Expanding educators’ focus to consider micro and macro scales is especially urgent now, as countries around the world implement programmes in which technology is the goal.

From Social Barriers to Transformative Planning in Energy Transitions: Learning from Norwegian Planners’ Perspectives

This study investigates social barriers in Norwegian urban energy projects from the planner’s perspective, bridging institutional and reflexive approaches in the field of planning. Compared to technological barriers encountered in the energy transition, social barriers have received relatively little attention. While the former implies a need for hard technological fixes, social barriers cross sectoral dimensions and can potentially be transformed through strategic action during the life of a project. When planning energy transitions under the popular guise of smart and sustainable cities, social barriers arise in the context of urban experimentation, which challenges institutional constructs, participatory planning principles, and knowledge. These aspects are addressed from the planner’s perspective through analysis of planners’ experiences in seven energy pilot and demonstration sites in Norway. The results identify categories of social barriers related to the understanding of a shared vision amongst stakeholders, lowered ambitions over the course of a project, lack of user involvement, and structural constraints to planning. A framework for a deeper understanding of social barriers is proposed, extending to the notion of planners’ transformative agency to support sustainability transitions, which has the potential for future enrichment through the addition of cases and application in other fields of sustainability transitions.

Radical reflexivity, experimental ontology and RRI

ABSTRACT RRI does not challenge what this paper calls ‘lyseology’: mobilizing science to convince policy makers and the public that the present possesses some form of lack that should be addressed with a new technology. For a sustained critique of technological fixes as solutions a more radical shift from the persistent old view of a static outside world is required. This entails a process-based understanding of reality and specific consequences thereof for practice. To do so the paper offers an analysis of in what manner current RRI discourse builds on old subject-object ontologies and relies on an outdated worldview. The paper suggests possible pathways of conceiving of research and innovation otherwise: RRI should reorient towards the ontology turn, learn from ethnomethodology and radical reflexivity, as well as from the politics of material participation. This paper proposes that research and innovation should engage with quantum theory inspired alternative worldviews.

Examining Opportunities and Challenges for Addressing the Climate Impact of Aviation: A Narrative Review

Aviation is responsible for about five per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions through the burning of fossil fuels. This analysis explores the potential and obstacles of measures to reduce travel, energy use, and emissions in order to lessen aviation's impact on the climate in Sweden. Various efforts have been made to decrease aviation's climate impact, from regulations to alternative technologies for jet fuel. These efforts face multiple challenges, many rooted in social and political issues that are often overlooked in favour of technological fixes. One major hurdle is creating a market for alternatives to traditional jet fuel as consumer awareness and willingness to invest in these innovations remain limited. Current policy measures have proven ineffective at driving change; an understanding of aviation as a socio-technical system is essential moving forward. The significance of this review lies in its comprehensive examination of ways to diminish aviation’s climate impact, presenting new perspectives and identifying areas for further research by considering all components, their interactions, and interdependence.

The Ethics of (Generative) AI

Abstract The clamor for AI-based applications involving generative models for text and images has fueled wild speculation about the risks and opportunities for society and humanity at large. The potential “existential” threat as a precursor to artificial general intelligence has provoked wide-ranging debates in the public, politics, and the corporate world involving technologists and ethicists from a range of academic disciplines. This thinkpiece proposes a metaperspective to reflect critically and constructively upon the current state of the field of AI ethics, arguing that scholars working in the domain of ethics should focalize conceptual, substantive, and procedural issues as integral elements of an ethical assessment of given technologies and their applications. It suggests that the ethics of generative AI is conceptually still underexplored and overly propagating technological fixes to problems of all kinds (technosolutionism). Procedurally, it needs to be clarified who can, who ought to, and who ultimately will be considered and heard as an expert on AI ethics, a question of relevance for the trust in, and reliance on, AI.

Coping with extreme heat: current exposure and implications for the future.

A preview of how effective behavioral, biological and technological responses might be in the future, when outdoor conditions will be at least 2°C hotter than current levels, is available today from studies of individuals already living in extreme heat. Inareas where high temperatures are common-particularly those in the hot and humid tropics-several studies report that indoor temperatures in low-income housing can be significantly hotter than those outdoors. A case study indicates that daily indoor heat indexes in almost all the 123 slum dwellings monitored in Kolkata during the summer were above 41°C (106°F) for at least an hour. Economic constraints make it unlikely that technological fixes, such as air conditioners, will remedy conditions like these-now or in the future. People without access to air conditioning will have to rely on behavioral adjustments and/or biological/physiological acclimatization. One important unknown is whether individuals who have lived their entire lives in hot environments without air conditioning possess natural levels of acclimatization greater than those indicated by controlled laboratory studies. Answering questions about the future will require more studies of heat conditions experienced by individuals, more information on indoor versus outdoor heat conditions, and a greater understanding of the behavioral and biological adjustments made by people living today in extremely hot conditions.

Strengthening postharvest technology development and improvement through feedback

This inquiry is predicated on the datum or truism that all technologies have a gap and or become obsolete at some point, and the utilization of passé technologies and methods predisposes the agricultural sector to underdevelopment. It investigates technological paucities and fixes for NSPRI technologies (NSPRI Smoking Kiln (NSK), Parabolic-shaped Solar Dryer (PSSD), Ice Fish Box® (IFB®), Hermetic Steel Drum (HSD) and Ventilated Plastic Crate (VPC)) from the perspective of users of the technologies. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design using the in-person method as its feedback mechanism in 18 states across 6 geopolitical zones in Nigeria. Data were obtained through interview schedules supplemented with key informant interviews while a multi-stage sampling procedure was employed in the selection of respondents. Firstly, eighteen (18) States where NSPRI postharvest technologies have been disseminated and adopted were purposively selected. Secondly, users of improved NSPRI postharvest technologies were selected from diverse locations within the states earlier selected. Non-probabilistic techniques particularly snowballing were also employed at this stage. Frequencies, percentages, means and weighted averages were employed in the analysis of data components. Results showed that 70% of respondents have never provided feedback on NSPRI technologies. Executives of various associations were used by 45% of NSK users, 59% of IFB users, and 48% of VPC users to provide feedback while 43% of PSSD users and 40% of HSD users shared opinions through NSPRI extension staff. In general, there exists a strong (NSK: 94% PSSD: 95.2% IFB®: 91% HSD: 88.6% VPC: 74.5%) willingness to recommend technologies among respondents even as they provided positive feedback on use parameters and components of the technologies. However, respondents opined that the roller and chimney (NSK), durability of polypropylene cover (PSSD), draining of thawed ice (IFB®), and bolted ring (HSD) require improvement.

Design urban climate-resilience with Nature-Based Solutions and Green Infrastructures. Challenges, issues, and best practices for neighborhood-scale regeneration

Climate change poses unprecedented challenges to urban environments, mostly affecting already vulnerable communities and ecosystems. While Climate Action (13th Sustainable Development Goal) still tends to focus on economic shifts and technological fixes, urban design and planning can play a crucial role in climate adaptation processes, enhancing socio-ecological resilience, while improving inclusivity, livability, wellbeing for all, opening to sustainable development scenarios. By focusing on nature-based solutions (NBS) and green infrastructure (GI), the contribution, which is part of an ongoing research, aims at identifying issues, challenges, and best practices to operationalize climate resilient adaptation through urban nature design and planning process and actions for neighborhood scale’s regeneration. Through a qualitative methodology, three neighborhood case studies, recognized as best practices, will be compared in order to understand, issue and procedures related to the implementation of climate NBS and GI inside urban regeneration design and planning process.eworks towards equitable and livable urban futures.

Varieties of platform unionism: a view from the Global South on workers’ power in the digital economy

Nearly three decades ago, Manuel Castells declared the atomising effects of the new technologies of the ‘information age’ to presage the ‘end of labour’. There is little doubt that the labour movement worldwide is no longer the social force it was in the twentieth century. Much of the debate on the future of work and consequences for worker organisation, moreover, has focused on defensive struggles against the introduction of new technologies in the Global North. Technological change has also led, however, to struggles in the Global South. These ‘technological fixes’ have historically contributed to the ‘remaking’ of new working classes and related ‘offensive’ struggles, the latest of which is digitalisation and algorithmic management. In this primarily conceptual article, we adopt a power resources approach to an analysis of these changes, using as our basis, a project encompassing eight empirical case studies on recent labour organising in on-location platform economies of both the Global North and South. Analysis of food-delivery and private ride-hailing platforms in Argentina and Uganda, respectively, showed different varieties of platform unionism, with forms of worker organisation in the Global South tending to more autonomy and hybridity. In some cases, these self-organised worker collectives go beyond established forms of unionism in attempts to control the platform technologies. We conclude by suggesting that the experiments of platform workers with new forms of power and organisation, particularly in the Global South, are important to follow in the Global North.

Economies of resistance

ABSTRACT The social organisation of economic life plays a pivotal role in assembling many emerging and enduring health problems. Yet throughout the recent history of global health challenges, an emphasis on the influence of economic systems has frequently been sidelined in favour of research that interrogates the behavioural and/or cultural dimensions of these problems. The global crisis of antimicrobial resistance provides a striking example of this trend, with analysis frequently and increasingly focusing on behavioural or technological fixes – for example, the need for responsible use of remaining antimicrobial drugs, or for revived efforts to identify new antimicrobial agents – while at times glossing over the market logics that reproduce the problem itself. With a few notable exceptions, the economic headwinds that shape the current antimicrobial resistance (AMR) scene have been largely decentred in scholarly discussions. In this article, we argue for a critical sociology of economies of resistance, contributing to burgeoning efforts to understand how economic structures both shape the acceleration of AMR and undermine the development of drug and diagnostic solutions.

Transformative disruptiveness or transition? Revealing digitalization and deep decarbonization pathways in the Italian smart electricity meter roll-out

Energy infrastructure digitalization is proposed as key for a just deep decarbonization. However, an integrative literature review reveals the lack of a more profound exploration on normative considerations tied to world perspectives and values, as levers of a lasting transformation in the context of socio-technical transitions. Thus, the paper employs qualitative research methods to investigate how energy infrastructure digitalization contributes to transformative disruption, along which deliberated deep decarbonization pathways, using Italy's smart electricity meter roll-out as a case study. While the roll-out represents a substantial effort in introducing digital devices into the residential sector, concerns persist about its effectiveness, also due to potential societal disruptions. Through in-depth interviews with experts (N = 17) and citizens (N = 23) and content-oriented analysis, the research unveils evolving pathways between ever more disengaged two grand narratives and value systems: energy as a commodity and energy as a common good. The first opts for technological progress, changing consumer behavior, to address energy poverty and social justice, building on market-based instruments and new business models. Conversely, the second harbors skepticism towards technological fixes, emphasizes energy sufficiency and questions energy opulence, linked to environmental justice considerations, and calling for corrective principles by regulatory means. Finally, the paper presents a conceptual framework to re-shape deep deliberative transformation, highlighting the importance of re-connecting to defined values, re-generating actionable knowledge, restructuring institutions in societal experimentation, and recognizing underlying processes such as justice claims. It argues for further research into discourse coalitions capitalizing on defined narratives, to better understand their impact on policy-making processes.

A Norwegian seaweed utopia? Governmental narratives of coastal communities, upscaling, and the industrial conquering of ocean spaces

Algae-based biomass occupies a prominent role in policy narratives for a more sustainable future situated between Blue Growth Strategies and European (Blue) bioeconomy development. Especially in Norway, the developing seaweed farming sector is portrayed as a novel bioresource sector entailing an array of benefits to remediate global as local environmental and socio-economic challenges. Accredited with massive growth potentials and framed by large-scale industrialist rhetoric with a future in conquering ocean spaces through technological fixes, the sector’s development faces multiple challenges. Additionally, the assumptive growth-centred policy narratives employed leave little room for small-scale, locally embedded alternatives called upon by many experts on sustainable and socially just blue resource governance. The paper addresses this issue by conceptualizing Norwegian seaweed farming as an assembling process with a focus on (policy) narratives as a means for governmental spatial interventions. Based on qualitative data with a focus on active Norwegian seaweed farmers’ perspectives for the sector’s current practices and future developments, the paper assesses the relations and contradictions between the optimistic key policy narratives, current sector developments, and the entrepreneur positionalities that shape the reproduction processes of this Norwegian seaweed assemblage. The paper shows that strong beliefs in extensive growth and technological solutions to tackle the fluid materialities of seaweed production are widespread among entrepreneurs. Paired with policy strategies and a development environment rooted in similar narratives, this creates a current development approach that reduces challenges to technological and administrative domains and neglects the (local) socio-economic and sustainability potential vested in alternative, small-scale approaches.

Making cyber security more resilient: adding social considerations to technological fixes

How can a focus on socio-technical vulnerability and uncertainty make cyber security more resilient? In this article, we provide a conceptual discussion of how to increase cyber resilience. First, we show how cyber security and resilience thinking co-evolved through their connection to critical infrastructures, and how the ensuing dominant technical focus inevitably always falls short due to the diverse societal values that underpin their critical social functions. We argue that a sole focus on aggregate systems neglects the important differences in how cyber threats are experienced and dealt with by individuals. Second, we draw on insights from social resilience and disaster management literature to establish a better link between individuals and cyber systems. We focus on two key aspects of cyber security that highlight its social nature: vulnerability and uncertainty. Instead of thinking of cyber security as a “technical problem + humans,” we suggest cyber security should be conceptualized as a “social problem + technology.” We conclude by highlighting three ways forward for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners: interdisciplinary research, public debate about a set of normative questions, and the need for an uncertainty discourse in politics and policymaking.

Plug-in urbanism: City building and the parodic guise of new infrastructure in Africa

Across Africa, cities have become fodder for grand-scale foreign investments and redevelopment projects signifying a distinct phenomenon synonymous with a new kind of urbanism. This paper offers a critical commentary on the proliferation of new infrastructure plans tailored as policy, technological fixes and solutions to urbanisation challenges, both real and perceived. We stir a conversation around the notion of ‘plug-in urbanism’: first, as an entry point for the study of a model of city building that is exceedingly determined by reflex prioritisation of assumedly universal and transferable corporate-driven policy agendas; secondly, as a critique of unidirectional, homogenising and determinist technological ideas and infrastructures; and thirdly, as a recourse to inclusive and holistic planning. We present the case of the Nairobi Expressway, a recently launched two- to four-lane 27 km viaduct, and the largest in Africa, as an example of a ‘plug-in’ infrastructure project: i.e. pre-packaged state-of-the-art development installation that comes complete and tailored as a magic bullet and obvious solution to identified mobility and transport challenges in Nairobi city. We demonstrate how in its parodic guise, the expressway highlights a project that is designed and financed by foreign authorities and sustained in line with foreign standard ideologies of what a world-class city should look like, yet in reality only leads to piecemeal and incomplete growth and development. Drawing from a standpoint of multiple urbanisms, we argue for more inclusive urban futures and visions that are responsive to diverse, popular and heterogeneous articulations of cities.

Strengthening Postharvest Technology Development and Improvement Through Feedback

This inquiry is predicated on the datum or truism that all technologies have a gap and or become obsolete at some point, and the utilization of passé technologies and methods predisposes the agricultural sector to underdevelopment. It investigates technological paucities and fixes for NSPRI technologies (NSPRI Smoking Kiln (NSK), Parabolic-shaped Solar Dryer (PSSD), Ice Fish Box® (IFB®), Hermetic Steel Drum (HSD) and Ventilated Plastic Crate (VPC)) from the perspective of users of the technologies. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design using the in person method as its feedback mechanism in 18 states across 6 geopolitical zones in Nigeria. Data were obtained through interview schedules supplemented with key informant interviews while a multi-stage sampling procedure was employed in the selection of respondents. Firstly, eighteen (18) States where NSPRI postharvest technologies have been disseminated and adopted were purposively selected. Secondly, users of improved NSPRI postharvest technologies were selected from diverse locations within the states earlier selected. Non-probabilistic techniques particularly snowballing were also employed at this stage. Frequencies, percentages, means and weighted averages were employed in the analysis of data components. Results showed that 70% of respondents have never provided feedback on NSPRI technologies. Executives of various associations was used by 45% of NSK users, 59% of IFB users, and 48% of VPC users to provide feedback while 43% of PSSD users and 40% of HSD users shared opinions through NSPRI extension staff. In general, there exists a strong (NSK: 94% PSSD: 95.2% IFB®: 91% HSD: 88.6% VPC: 74.5%) willingness to recommend technologies among respondents even as they provided positive feedback on use parameters and components of the technologies. However, respondents opined that the roller and chimney (NSK), durability of polypropylene cover (PSSD), draining of thawed ice (IFB®), and bolted ring (HSD) require improvement.

Science and the COVID Epidemic in India

This essay explores the relationship between scientific knowledge and democracy in India, using COVID-19 as a case study. It shows how the state consolidates itself through technological fixes, ignoring deeper issues in civil society. The essay covers the impact of COVID-19 on migrants and the informal economy and suggests that civil society needs a biopolitics from below. It discusses the need to rework concepts like citizenship and vulnerability and cautions that the epidemic has to be seen as a prelude to the deeper demands of the Anthropocene.

Inclusive innovation in cities: from buzzword to policy

ABSTRACT ‘Inclusive innovation’ has become an increasingly important subnational policy agenda. This paper reviews this agenda, critiques its current usage and presents a new framework for how the concept can be applied by city government. Efforts to shape the direction, improve participation in and share the benefits of innovation should be an important part of place-based innovation policy. Yet, inclusive innovation strategies face three related problems: neophilia, a tendency for technological fixes and the lack of local powers. The paper concludes with a framework for how the concept could be used by policymakers to link innovation with better distributional outcomes.

Digital diagnostics from Tanzania: Beyond mere technological fixing?

Digital and data-driven technologies are increasingly being deployed in healthcare systems around the world, and used by individuals seeking to improve their health. Major global health institutions, from the WHO to the Gates Foundation, are arguing for their importance in the building of healthcare futures across the world. For critics, however, the broad enthuasiam for digital health has raised the question of whether too much faith is being put in minimal, 'technological fixes' driven by the market for problems that have intractable social determinants. This article focusses on a group of apparent technological fixers, Tanzanian data and computer scientists designing and building various forms of digital diagnostics. It argues that these diagnostics, and the social forms they are creating, need to be understood differently than as purely attenuated, market-driven technological solutions for specific problems. Instead, they represent ambitious efforts to create new and superior healthcare futures from Tanzania, that speak to broader systems as much as abstract and narrow technical processes, and to the public good as much as the private.